On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 22:38, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
> No, in fact the mandated digital tuner that will eventually be
> required in all US TV's won't work with the digital encoding
> on the cable systems where nearly all of them will be
> connected either.
>
I never liked having to use cable boxes. The tuners in the TVs, VCRs,
DVRs, etc should by default be able to accept and use all the signals
sent by the cable company. It gets to be a mess trying to split and
route connections to all the different devices and forget viewing
multiple channels that are digital or pay channels if you don't have
multiple cable boxes.
> > As I mentioned in another message I believe I read that cable companies
> > must provide a firewire interface for digital content. Not sure that
> > includes the HDTV content or not but would suspect that it would.
>
> Yes, it does. I have Comcast and the Motorola DVR and have been
> able to get HD out the firewire and view it with videolan client
> but it is very inconvenient since it only plays in real time
> as the same thing shows on the video outputs.
>
I don't understand that, you want to pull in a show faster than it
plays?
> > Of course I also read that as of July 2005 they have passed laws making
> > it illegal to make HDTV cards that don't support broadcast flags.
> >
> > Suspect there will be a big battle over this in the next year or two as
> > HDTV becomes more common and people find that they are unable to record
> > and time shift shows.
>
> Oh, it isn't that you are unable to record - you are only allowed
> to use certain equipment to do it. The DVR itself does basic
> timeshifting, and the firewire output is usable even with
> protected content with D-VHS tape drives - just not generic
> computer equipment...
Wonder how long that will last? Such things normally present a
challenge to those that develop things like mythtv. :)
